Sacramentan William T. Vollmann, shown in 2005 with his “Europe Central,” cites “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program” by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as his top non-fiction choice.
Rich Pedroncelli
Associated Press file

Sacramentan William T. Vollmann, shown in 2005 with his “Europe Central,” cites “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program” by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as his top non-fiction choice.
Rich Pedroncelli
Associated Press file

Good reads, recommended by authors and others

By Allen Pierleoni

apierleoni@sacbee.com

December 29, 2014 8:00 AM

It was a landmark year for book lovers, the ultimate beneficiaries of the $27 billion-a-year books industry. The landslide of titles in all genres was satisfyingly relentless, with a lineup of A-list and dark-horse authors releasing a grab-bag of best-selling titles.

Another positive was a revival of traditional bookstores despite talk of the “death of print” in the face of the digital revolution, the biggest ongoing concern in the book-publishing industry. Certainly, the marriage of e-books and electronic readers has been a fruitful one on many fronts, but not all.

“With the advances in self-publishing and digital technology, anybody can quote-unquote write and publish a book, so from that standpoint, there has never been more content from which to choose,” said Jim Milliot. He’s the editorial director of Publishers Weekly, the “bible of the book business.”

However, he added, “It’s like having 600 channels on your TV – you never really know what all is there. How do you cut through all that material and find the quality?”

The issue of “discoverability” – finding the gold among the glitter – is of major concern to publishers and to the editors of Publishers Weekly, who review 8,000 titles a year. It also affects discerning readers in search of quality titles.

“As newspapers and magazines cut back on book reviews and book sections, there are fewer authoritative sources,” Milliot said. “There are a lot of bloggers and websites with a lot of opinions, but readers have to figure out which ones to pay attention to. When it’s all said and done, word of mouth is the best way to hear about good books. Survey after survey show that.”

As for the health of print books, Milliot is cautiously optimistic: “There’s no one in the industry who doesn’t think print will be around for a long time. The panic in the industry over e-books has somewhat subsided, but there could be some disruptive technology around the corner.”

For a second opinion we called Hut Landon. As executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association in San Francisco, he is well-entrenched in the national publishing scene. One of the developments he saw in 2014 was a reinvigoration of bookstores.

“People are rediscovering the experience of walking into a bookstores,” he said. “I have friends who thought it was cool to sit in their pajamas at their dining room tables at 2 a.m. and order books online and know they would be delivered. There was an initial novelty to that, but then they started saying, ‘I miss getting out of the house and having the social experience of going into a bookstore and interacting with people.’ It’s part of the quality of life, and you can’t duplicate that online.”

For a new year of reading and some word-of-mouth recommendations, we turned to a few of our favorite authors and book-industry players for a few titles that particularly impressed them in 2014. Most of their choices were published last year or released as paperback editions of 2013 titles.

▪ James Patterson of Palm Beach, Fla., author of “Hope To Die: The Return of Alex Cross” and about 150 other titles; www.jamespatterson.com

Nonfiction: “The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution” by Walter Isaacson; “Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs” by Joshua Wolf Shenk; “The Endless Practice: Becoming Who You Were Born To Be” by Mark Nepo

Nonfiction: “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future” by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

Fiction: “The Martian” by Andy Weir (the movie version will be released in November 2015, starring Jessica Chastain and Matt Damon); “The Bone Clocks” by David Mitchell; “The Children Act” by Ian McEwan; “The Book of Strange New Things” by Michel Faber

Nonfiction: “The Conscience of the Constitution” by Timothy Sandefur: “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi” by Mitchell Zuckoff; “Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General” by Bill O’Reilly

Nonfiction: “The Faraway Nearby: A Field Guide to Getting Lost” by Rebecca Solnit; “On Immunity: An Inoculation” by Eula Biss; “Once Upon a Time: A Short History of the Fairy Tale” by Marina Warner; “Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life” by Tom Robbins

Fiction: “An Unnecessary Woman” by Rabih Alameddine; “We Are Called to Rise” by Laura McBride; “Euphoria” by Lily King